Lee, Harper—To Kill a Mockingbird
1960
TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD
by Harper Lee
DEDICATION
for Mr. Lee and Alice
in consideration of Love & Affection
Lawyers, I suppose, were children once.
Charles Lamb
PART ONE
1
When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly
broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being
able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about
his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he
stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body,
his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as
he could pass and punt.
When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them,
we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain
that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior,
said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came
to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo e out.
I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began
with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the
creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and
where would we be if he hadn’t? We were far too old to settle an
argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we
were both right.
Being Southerners, it was a source of shame to some members of
the family that we had no recorded ancestors on either side of the
Battle of Hastings. All we had was Simon Finch, a fur-trapping
apothecary from Cornwall whose piety was exceeded only by his
stinginess. In England, Simon was irritated by the persecution of those
who called themselves Methodists at the hands of their more liberal
brethren, and as Simon called himself a Methodist, he worked his way
across the Atlantic to Philadelphia, thence to Jamaica, thence to
Mobile, and up t
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